Welcome to this week’s edition of Follow-Up Friday, the post where I highlight reader’s comments, answer questions and generally just wrap up my week.

You Make Me Laugh – September 27, 2015

Paved by PawPrints said, “Cody has figured out the ways to score extra treats! As a puppy, in our puppy pre school classes, everyone would laugh because he would start doing every trick he know because he thought he could get more treats! ”

LOL and I bet he was looking beseechingly at you with those big puppy eyes.

Callie, Shadow and Ducky’s Mom said, “All our girls have ever had to do was follow their Daddy into the kitchen to get a special treat, like chicken or cheese or hamburger.”

Daddy’s are a special breed, aren’t they? Sampson and Delilah’s Daddy likes to feed them cheese, which I really wouldn’t mind so much if he wasn’t giving them a half a piece each! Hey Daddy, I use that cheese for my snack! I can’t really nosh on a Kong now, can I?

Cupcake said, “Such a good guy! Sometimes, “Come” sounds like “Run” to me. I just can’t get that one straight…..”

Oh Cupcake….you never cease to make me laugh. Maybe Mom should try “Go, Go, Go” and eliminate run altogether. 😉

2 Brown Dawgs said, “Very cute. You comment plugin keeps telling me that my comment is too short so I am adding meaningless words.”

I’m sorry about that. 🙂 But your comment did make me laugh. I am trying to be better at updating my plug ins. I’m hoping that will resolve the issue.

Jackie Bouchard said, ” Rita can get treats out of the hubs just by sitting next to the pantry where we keep all her treats. She totally has him wrapped around her paw! And he always “voices” her as she leads him to the pantry: “Daddy, come here. I want to show you something!”

LOL I love it!  We ‘voice’ our dogs too. Sometimes it just cracks us up.

The Sky Is Falling

Jen Gabbard said, “I’m glad I’m not the only one with a dog on high alert due to crap falling from the sky – for us it’s black walnuts, and those suckers hurt when they land on you. There’s an insane amount this year, I spent about 4 hours getting them ready to be cured (still in progress) and three days later there’s still just as many on the damn ground.”

Shoot, I’m sure they do hurt!! And interesting about ‘curing’ them. What does that entail? I almost wish we could eat acorns, I imagine I’d have quite a bit!

Emma said, “Last year Mom wasn’t paying attention, Bailie and I lunged after a squirrel, Mom tried to get her footing and one was on acorns, could just as well have been wheels. Bam…down she went and then to help, we tackled her.”

Oooh, you guys are always so ‘helpful’ to mom. Does she get in a foul mood after something like that happens? I find that I do. I’m tooling along and everything is hunky dory and then the dogs do something or we encounter something and suddenly I’m in a foul mood.

2 Brown Dawgs said, “Acorns are one thing, but at least you don’t have buckeye trees. Those thing are giant. Would not want to get beaned by one of those…We have a lot of acorns too this year up at the cabin. Good for the deer but we have to keep the dogs (Storm) from eating them.”

I had to google them as I had never heard of them. Dang, but those things are as big as chestnuts! Storm eats the acorns? Delilah hasn’t (so far) but she did chase one the other day and pick it up thinking she’d nabbed her prey, but she spit it right out. LOL

Jan said, “Some of our trees hurl large pine cones at us. We would welcome your sissy acorns.”

LOL I bet it hurts to get beaned by one of them! You can have the acorns, but you will need to take all the seasons with them. You can’t truly appreciate acorns unless you are dealing with everything else. 🙂

Jackie Bouchard said, “Worse than an acorn (by far) I had a caterpillar fall out of a tree the other day and land on my boob. I about had a freakin’ heart attack! I was totally doing the Muppet-arms-flail. Hopefully no one saw me…”

You win. I freak out when we walk through spider webs, looking over my shoulder to make sure I don’t have one on me. Tell me, did you scream too while you  were waving your arms about? I would be squealing like a pig.

Jan K said, “We don’t happen to have a lot of oak trees in our area, but I have heard where there are tons of acorns this year. It’s been a weird summer for stuff like that. We have a few apple trees around and there are TONS of apples on every tree! Our yard by the trees is just littered with them!  Someone said all this might mean it’s going to be a hard winter…I sure hope they’re wrong about that!”

Those would hurt if they fell on you too!! Do you have any dogs that try and eat those apples? There is one apple tree down the street and I constantly have to pull Delilah off the little apples on the road.

Lauranne said, “What I would give to see you out and about on a walk!”

Well you are welcome to come any time. Speaking of, I could really use a camera crew to follow us, it might make for good viewing. 😉

Dear Kitty – Barks and Bytes

Jen Gabbard said, “Aww reminds me of a stray we had around here we affectionately called Danny, though it was a she. They really do have pretty sweet survival skills, but there sense of humor isn’t the same as mine. Sitting outside the patio window to drive Laika insane is not my idea of fun. Oh now you’re going to gingerly lay down and groom yourself right there while my dog is going insane? Nice. They’re jerks, they really are, but I can’t help but love em.”

Oh no, that would never fly at my house. Delilah would be gnashing at the window.

colinandray said, “We have local By-Laws which state that no cats or dogs are supposed to be off leash and/or just roaming. Sadly we also have coyotes, foxes, large hungry racoons and hawks. More sadly, people ignore the By-Law (it clearly doesn’t apply to them), and another live meal is either hauled up into a tree (nice change from bunny), or it is surrounded and attacked. So many cats and small dogs go missing and are never found. Guess who are the first ones to complain about the wildlife? Guess who is really upset when their cat strays into dog territory and gets attacked? Perhaps your Post should be attached to “kitty” so that her owners can read it?”

Of course people ignore it and of course they are the first ones to complain. It’s really interesting about the cats. Really interesting. Around here the notion is that dogs must be leashed and under control, but cats being a different species cannot be controlled that way. We also must license our dogs with the town and prove they are up to date on rabies, but it isn’t required for cats either.

Sue said, “Silly kitty may have a death wish 😉 With the coyote population ever present and growing here, we see fewer and fewer stray cats – that food chain thing.”

It’s sad. Just yesterday morning on our walk I saw a poster for a lost cat. And our elderly neighbor had one that went missing too. If we had a cat I don’t know that I’d want it to be an outdoor cat.

Monika said, “For his part, Sam isn’t much of a fan, but I must remember to drop the leash (is that like learning to sit on command cuz I clearly have not managed to instill that one in my brain-instead my knuckles turn white from gripping too hard and screaming like a banshee for him to stop). While I would never wish any ill on any creature (the single except may be squirrels, but that’s another story), I wish there were a civilized way to co-exist with loose felines where they weren’t seen or heard. Feline love making is waaay to noisy and sounds very unfun for all participants. And finally, an anonymous note about the virtues of pet neutering taped to the doorway might be in order?”

It’s hard to just drop the leash. I know I worry they will run in front of a car (or in Delilah’s case, just keep running.) I do believe this cat is fixed because it does have a home, it just likes to wander.

Jan K said, “There was a time when I believed that cats needed to be let outside to roam and enjoy the outdoors. By the time we lost our fourth one….two to cars, one just disappeared (so most likely wildlife) and the last one to a neighbor’s dog….we smartened up and got over that belief. I try not to judge others though because of that. But all our cats are now and will always be kept indoors.”

I think some cats are quite content to be indoor cats. While part of me would want for rodent patrol in the yard, the other part of me would worry endlessly.

Pamela asked, “Does this mean you don’t recommend holding back two pulling dogs as the ultimate strength workout?”

Not only do I not recommend it, I highly discourage it!  I swear I have a pulled muscle in my arm from holding these two back.

That’s it for me folks,  have a wonderful weekend!